Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?

Update: seemingly not

Update: Oh yeah!

Friday, February 07, 2003

Roughly four more thoughts

More hit & run thoughts ... bigger pieces coming soon.

Does anyone remember "Internet incubators"? These were fads of about three years ago. They consisted of half a rented office block, a rich chinless wonder with a fat address book, and six or seven heartbreakingly pointless dot coms. Some of them IPOd, some didn't. I was just wondering, now that there are quite a lot of quoted former dot coms with no real prospects but (in some cases sizeable) cash balances, whether it would be worth my while quitting my job and starting an "Internet Hospice" to provide the same sort of networking and administrative economies of scale for wind-ups that the incubators claimed to provide for start-ups.

I've said a few nasty things about Paul Krugman in the past, but you have to admit it's bloody brave to take on Alan Greenspan.

Here's a life tip for you; when the Jehovah's Witnesses knock on your door, just look them in the eye and say "I'm sorry, we're Catholics". It works; they just drop their heads and walk away. There's a Kingdom Hall not far from my house, so I've been able to test this method out on a number of world religions, and I can report that JWs are happy to discuss religion at length with Atheists, Methodists, Church of England, Jews and Agnostics. But I claimed to be a Catholic a while ago, and they haven't been back since. Either there's a non aggression pact, or they work on the basis that if someone was brought up Catholic, they're unlikely to be swayed by theological argument. Funny eh?

UN Declaration 1441 was the equivalent of saying to a child who you suspect of having stolen your golf clubs "Just tell me where they are. I won't be cross". Why am I the only person surprised that it has had roughly the same effect?

Update Jesus wept. It took me a whole lunch break to come up with those four jokes, and SdB has managed another thousand-worder. Summarised thus "The Germans are weasels and America is so awash with international allies it can afford to tell them so".